The Business Of Sports Commentators

Q

uestion: What sportscaster jokingly boasts about having a major league batting average of .200?

(You can find the answer at the end of this article.)

A number of celebrities in the sports world pull down seven-figure salaries, even though they don’t suit up in uniform, take the field or touch a ball. In fact, some of these people have never done any of that.

Sports commentators for the major networks can make annual salaries that exceed $1 million, and they’re often household names in the homes of fans. Play-by-play commentators do most of the talking during game casts; they’re smooth talkers who are valued for their ability to tell you what’s happening on the field. Color commentators, on the other hand, provide deeper analysis because they possess experience from having played or coached with proven success. Many game broadcasts — both on the professional and college levels — have one of each.

Sports commentators have humble beginnings

Becoming a sportscaster is fairly similar to getting started as a pro baseball player: You have to start in a small market, earn a relatively meager salary and work your way up. For college grads hoping to land a gig as a sports anchor or reporter at a television station, the competition is fierce — each opening will attract around 100 to 200 applicants. Salaries can be as low as $15,000 in typical starter markets, which include relatively unknown towns such as Zanesville, Ohio, and Parkersburg, West Virginia.

Having a bachelor’s degree isn’t enough to be considered for a job; wannabe sports commentators need experience that can only be gained through an internship. These are usually work-for-free arrangements in which college students do whatever is needed to help a sportscast come together — shooting video, editing highlights, fetching coffee. During these hard times, interns work on their audition tapes, which accompany the on-paper resume and are an absolute must for anyone wanting to enter the industry.

While the starting salaries are obscenely low, the pay does get better. According to the Radio-Television News Directors Association & Foundation, the average sports reporter makes around $32,000 annually, while sports anchors (who get more face time) have an average yearly salary of $50,600.

Star status achieved

Being a star on the major-league level can be very lucrative for athletes and sports commentators alike. One such network star is John Madden, a Super Bowl-winning coach in the NFL who has made an even bigger name for himself through more than 20 years as a color commentator on game casts. In 1993, after FOX outbid CBS for the rights to air NFC contests, Madden landed a four-year, $30 million deal and became the highest-paid sports commentator of all time. In 2004, Forbes.com reported that his yearly income is around $17 million.

Brent Musberger is another former CBS sports commentator who pulls in serious money. In 1985, the network gave him a contract worth $2 million per year and he essentially took over the role of managing editor of NFL Today. CBS fired him in a very public manner in the early 1990s; however, Musberger made the news — this time for a good reason — two weeks later when he landed at ABC. He took a little bit of a pay cut, settling on $11 million over six years.